FRANKFURT (Reuters) -Germany’s grid regulator has approved the A-Nord power link, its head said on Tuesday, meaning it should go into operation in the middle of 2027 as part of an infrastructure upgrade to transmit wind energy from the north to the south of the country.
Klaus Mueller, president of the Bundesnetzagentur, added he expected approval for a second line, Ultranet, in the second half of the year, showing “the rightly expected network expansion will be sped up and turned into reality”.
Mueller is overseeing the building of a total of 9,600 kilometers (5,965 miles) of high-voltage grids needed as Germany seeks to use more renewable power and decarbonise its energy mix.
Of this, he said 4,400 km are expected to be given approval this year.
A-Nord, a 2 gigawatt subterranean, direct current line that will extend over 300 km in northwestern Germany, has been planned since 2018 to connect the offshore wind power port of Emden with Meerbusch near Duesseldorf.
It will be be linked to Ultranet, altogether forming a roughly 600 km corridor.
DC transmission technology, rather than the alternating current lines common in Europe, speeds up delivery and avoids transmission losses.
Ultranet, which unlike A-Nord will mostly run along existing overhead lines, is to run from Duesseldorf to Philippsburg in Baden-Wuerttemberg state, southwestern Germany, where big industrial power consumers such as Mercedes-Benz and Bosch are located.
(Reporting by Vera Eckert, editing by Madeline Chambers and Barbara Lewis)
